Will it ever send an email on its own?

No. The only writes to the mailbox are a draft, created by the Outlook node's Reply operation with Save as Draft on, and a category on the original message. Sending stays a human action. If you later want auto-send for a narrow class of replies, that is one switch on one node and one line in the prompt, and the guide explains the trade-off before you make it.

Why Notion for the FAQ rather than a document?

Notion pages read cleanly block by block through the API, and staff who never open n8n can edit them. A Google Doc works too; the read step is one node and the guide covers the swap.

What happens when Claude or Notion is down?

The run stops for that message, the error workflow posts the sender, subject and error to Teams, and the message gets no category. The next poll does not retry it on its own. Once the cause is fixed, the failed run is re-run from n8n's Executions list.

Can it work on my personal mailbox instead of a shared one?

Yes, and that is the simpler setup: sign the mailbox in and leave Use Shared Mailbox off. The shared route exists because Microsoft 365 shared mailboxes have no login of their own, so n8n reads them through the signed-in user's delegated access.

How long is the draft?

Whatever your prompt block says. The default asks for three short paragraphs at most, answering only what was asked, signed with the name you set, and never inventing a price, date or policy that is not on the FAQ page.

ONCTMade to order

Email triage & inbox

Outlook shared inbox → Claude draft reply saved in the thread + Teams ping

Open the thread and the reply is already drafted; you edit and press send.

Enquiries into a shared Outlook mailbox get a draft reply written from your own FAQ page in Notion, saved as a reply in the thread, and a Teams message telling the owner it is waiting. Nothing is sent by the automation. Office managers, brokers and agents answer from a draft instead of a blank page. Questions the FAQ cannot answer are marked Needs a human, not guessed.

How it works

O
Trigger
New message in the Inbox folder of the mailbox, or the shared mailbox set on the Outlook credential
Microsoft Outlook
if
Step 1
Filter out what should not get a draft
Drops automatic replies, bounces, newsletters and anything from your own domain, using sender and subject patterns you list in one block.
N
Step 2
Load the FAQ and policy page
Reads the blocks of one Notion page that holds your answers, hours, pricing rules and tone notes, so the draft says only what you have written down.
C
Step 3
Draft the reply and rate it
Claude writes a reply in your voice from the FAQ text and the email, and returns a label of Ready or Needs a human with a one-line reason.
if
Step 4
Branch on the label
Ready drafts continue to the mailbox; Needs a human skips the draft and goes straight to the Teams post with the model's reason.
O
Step 5
Save the draft as a reply in the thread
Runs the Outlook node's Reply operation with Save as Draft switched on, so the draft sits in the Drafts folder, addressed and quoted, with the model's text as the body.
O
Step 6
Categorise the original message
Applies Draft ready or Needs a human as an Outlook category, so the state shows in the inbox list without opening anything.
T
Step 7
Tell the owner in Teams
Posts to the channel with sender, subject, the category and a link to the message; failures anywhere upstream post here too, with the error text.

What changes once it runs

A draft reply is waiting in the thread within one polling interval of the email arriving.
Every draft is grounded in one Notion page you control; change the page and the next draft changes.
No email leaves the mailbox until a person opens the draft and presses send.
Questions outside the FAQ are marked Needs a human with the model's reason, not answered with a guess.
The Teams channel is the audit trail: one post per email that passes the filter, including the ones that failed.

What you get

The n8n workflow export plus the error-handler workflow that posts failures to Teams
Setup guide for the Microsoft sign-in, shared-mailbox access, the Notion integration and the Anthropic key
Drafting prompt with the voice, length and refusal rules in an editable block
Notion FAQ page template with the sections the prompt expects
Recorded walkthrough of the first draft and the first Needs a human case
Thirty days of email support for setup questions

Before you start

Microsoft 365 mailbox, or a shared mailbox the signed-in user has Full Access to, entered under Use Shared Mailbox on n8n's Outlook credential
Teams channel the signed-in account can post to; self-hosted n8n needs an Entra app with Mail.ReadWrite, Mail.ReadWrite.Shared and ChannelMessage.Send
Notion workspace with an internal integration token and one FAQ page shared with that integration
Anthropic API key with billing enabled
Outlook categories Draft ready and Needs a human created in the mailbox before the first run
n8n cloud or self-hosted; every step uses a built-in node and the trigger polls, so no public URL is needed

Built for

Questions before you buy

Will it ever send an email on its own?: No. The only writes to the mailbox are a draft, created by the Outlook node's Reply operation with Save as Draft on, and a category on the original message. Sending stays a human action. If you later want auto-send for a narrow class of replies, that is one switch on one node and one line in the prompt, and the guide explains the trade-off before you make it.
Why Notion for the FAQ rather than a document?: Notion pages read cleanly block by block through the API, and staff who never open n8n can edit them. A Google Doc works too; the read step is one node and the guide covers the swap.
What happens when Claude or Notion is down?: The run stops for that message, the error workflow posts the sender, subject and error to Teams, and the message gets no category. The next poll does not retry it on its own. Once the cause is fixed, the failed run is re-run from n8n's Executions list.
Can it work on my personal mailbox instead of a shared one?: Yes, and that is the simpler setup: sign the mailbox in and leave Use Shared Mailbox off. The shared route exists because Microsoft 365 shared mailboxes have no login of their own, so n8n reads them through the signed-in user's delegated access.
How long is the draft?: Whatever your prompt block says. The default asks for three short paragraphs at most, answering only what was asked, signed with the name you set, and never inventing a price, date or policy that is not on the FAQ page.

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